Is Kylo Ren as Bad as Shinzon?

[Winter]

It's a question that's been bugging me for a while now, is Kylo Ren (who IMO is the worst villain in Star Wars) as badly written as Shinzon from Star Trek Nemesis? Both fail at everything they do, both are the "Off-Spring" of a hero of the series and both don't really have much of an actual motive for anything they do.

Kylo spends most of the whole Trilogy jumping from motive to motive as the plot demands and Shinzon is doing what he does because of his love for the Orcs, I mean Orochi, I mean Reman which he loves so much he has one killed for failing to hold Picard hostage and risks everything they fought for to satisfy his curiosity. Honestly the only redeeming element for both characters is really their actors. Adam Driver and Tom Hardy do give genuinely good performances but a good actor can't save an awful character.

There's also the underlining issue that despite both villains being such utter screw ups they do manage to get, in Shinzon's case, one hero killed. Not through any clever plan that shows how dangerous they are mind you but just because the heroes decided to get themselves killed in a way that could have been easily avoided had they just taken the two seconds needed think things through.

Han, Luke and Leia all died by reaching out to Kylo and that act got them all killed and with the exception of Han, who is the only one who's death was decently handled IMO, the deaths of the Original Trio felt forced, unneeded and felt like they were killing them off just to prove they could. Same thing with Data, as Chuck pointed out in his review of STN they could have just used one of the Shuttles Transporters to A) Get over to Shinzon's ship. B) Used the Shuttle over to Shinzon's ship with a Bomb in it to blow the whole thing up and finally C) Used a Shuttle to Transport to and from Shinzon's ship.

There were several ways out of this and they went with the way that required the least amount of thought because it was either that or actually put some effort into this. And that's my biggest issue with both villains, there was no real effort put into either of them. Kylo Ren and Shinzon are just Darth Vader and Khan without any of the elements that made them such a great villains and characters it's all just surface.

So, the question remains, is Kylo Ren as badly written as Shinzon?

[Link8909]

For me personal, Shinzon was more badly written than Kylo Ren.

The biggest flaw I feel with Kylo Ren is very much as you pointed out, he's too much like Darth Vader and without the elements that made him great, and even the allegory to him representing the angry fanboys does get tiring, maybe if Kylo wasn't connected to the Skywalker linage and simply was obsessed with Vader that they mimicked him, and have them be the villain in just one film and not as a primary villain of the trilogy, and I think he would have worked better.

Shinzon on the other hand is simply written inconsistently, constantly changing his motivation and morals, and every decision doesn't make a lot of sense, so Romulans made him a slave and cannon fodder in the Dominion War, but his revenge plot is against Earth and Picard? Even the dark reflection to Picard doesn't works as old Shinji exhibits none of Picard's basic traits beyond being bold and drinking tea, honestly Kylo was written more consistently with his goals and characterisation, but even the Klingon Captain from The Final Frontier was a better villain than Shinzon.

Personally the story of Picard facing off against a mirror of himself and questioning nature verses nurture has merit, but how Nemesis executed that story simply wasn't good, I personally would have had Sir Patrick Stewart play Shinzon like Picard but noticeably more aggressive in his actions, have him be passionate about wanting equality for the Remans, but more importantly have him be genuine about wanting peace with the Federation (and maybe Klingons), but have other parties like the Remans, Romulans, and unwittingly Picard tricking him into thinking that the Federation can't be trusted.

[cilantro]

I personally think that Kylo Ren is written worse than Shinzon. Hear me out, In Nemesis, they tried to explain Shinzon's back story as a clone of Picard that was basically thrown into the trash (aka Romulans mines) with a species that the Romulans basically had enslaved. At least we got a bit of the "why" Shinzon was acting and why he would hate not only Picard (the man that the Romulans wanted to replace Picard with) but with Kylo all we got as "I wanted to be like my grandfather...", Luke Skywalker literally trying to kill him (as a teenager/kid) while he was sleeping (basically ruining the character of Luke), and "Snoke turned him to the Darkside...". Not only that but they were trying to play around with the idea that he was actually somehow "good" on the inside (despite him killing billions with Starkiller and him also killing his father in cold blood. Not to mention trying to murder his own mother and torturing Rey). Plus, it seemed like they were also playing around with the idea of a romance between Rey and Kylo (blah...) all the while trying to still use him as the bad guy. Basically, both characters (Shinzon and Kylo) were written poorly but at least Shinzon's motives made more sense, in my opinion.

[Wargriffin]

Kylo is the result of people looking at Vader's redemption and assuming that Vader's character revolved around and built up to that moment

It didn't... Vader's redemption is the culmination of LUKE's arc not Vader's


Kylo they say they wanted a conflicted young man but his backstory leads a lot to be desired

Even Luke trying to kill him paints Kylo like he was a bad seed since his first instinct was to lash out and kill everybody else -made worse that the comics try to backpedal and make the massacre NOT his or the knights of ren doing...-

Even Kylo's redemption is lost in the Palpy Shuffle and is just something that happens.


Shizon is just evil masquerading as having depth... I mean why else would you have him mental rape Troi out of nowhere!

[Rocketboy1313]

Ben "Kylo Ren" Solo is the best villain in all of Star Wars.
(Keeping in mind that I have not watched the Mandalorian).

Shinzon is so non-iconic (conic?) that no human outside of the Star Trek fandom would know what the hell talking about. He is so poorly written as to defy reason.

I have no idea what prompted you to compare these two characters.
To me, they are so distant that I can't think of an analogy to illustrate how distant they are.
I guess they are both young men in science fiction franchises.

[Winter]

I have no idea what prompted you to compare these two characters.

Because I see both as incompetent idiots who fail at everything they do, have no consistent motivation beyond whatever the plot demands at that moment and are both failed attempts to duplicate other popular characters (Vader for Kylo & Khan and Picard for Shinzon). Honestly I see Kylo as the worst overall villain of Star Wars as he lacks what made Vader such an icon who embodies the worst elements of Anakin from the Prequel Trilogy and none of the elements that made him interesting. Kylo spends the entire Trilogy failing at everything he does and was such a bad leader and villain that he ended up needing Palpatine and in the supposed original version of Episode 9 (Duel of the Fates) THAT version of the story picks the Kylo is pathetic angle and sticks with it.

However, in all honestly and with no sarcasm intended I would like to know why you consider Kylo as "the best villain in all of Star Wars". I might not agree but the whole point of this site is to listen to hear everyone out and to recognize that everyone has a different opinion.

[Nealithi]

The problem comparing these characters is the old apple versus orange thing. There are some root similarities. But not enough to have the same mold.

Shinzon and the Romulans were pointless. Let's look at the previous movies to see why. Generations it was said by Chuck that Lursa and Bator were pointless to the movie as anyone could deliver their lines and mean just as much. Having them be those villains meant nothing. But First Contact, the Borg vs Picard. This IS his Nemesis. The ones that hurt him and those he is sworn to protect and he is often powerless to stop. They were perfect. The Son'a from Insurrection being no one we have heard of makes perfect sense. The Baku don't want outside contact. They are space Amish, just let them live in peace is all they ask. So the folks that splintered from them being a minor group is fitting. And the motivations of the Son'a to punish the ones that cast them out felt fitting. You could grasp what they wanted.
Shinzon and the Romulans. Did the villains being Romulans mean anything specifically? If we swapped them for Klingons would there be any real change to the story? So using Romulans was pointless. Shinzon is meant to be Khan 2.0, but as Chuck pointed out we already had that in the Borg. An established villain that would wipe out all the hero loves. Shinzon was a copy paste villain that was going to super weapon the good guy for evulz. Oh and has spave nosferatu as his minions and mentally rapes the girl because we don't have any puppies around. He is a waste of a villain because of this. He fails to meet his own goals. Bringing the Remans up in status and healing himself. He would have been better if he had been Picard's forgotten clone son. Anyone remember that Daimon Bok had altered Jason Vigo's DNA so he seemed to be Picard's son? Vigo and Bok would have been better here. Vigo needing Picard's DNA to correct defects that came from the resequencing. And Bok causing the delays to twist the knife.
So Shinzon was a wasted concept for a villain.

Now look at Kylo Ren. We first meet him he has a Vader vibe to him. He has the awesome power to halt a blaster bolt in mid flight. Holy***t! He then slowly dissolves as evil and comes off as more a boy told to kick puppies to prove he was worth being in his new 'Father's' house. They wanted Vader 2.0 but ended up with a puppy that didn't know if it should be wagging it's tail or biting someone. At no point could you really drop anyone else into the role. He was the (not)sith lord. He did not really ramp up his villainy on his own. The second movie he is in and he and his forces instead of coming out on top like Empire, come across as fools.

So summation. Shizon was a waste. Kylo was wasted.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I think Kylo Ren is hardly the worst thing of the sequel trilogy.

It's the same kind of misfiring, but Shnzon wouldn't have been able to hold three Star Trek movies as well as Ren did.

[clearspira]

Ben "Kylo Ren" Solo is the best villain in all of Star Wars.

Trolling?

[Admiral X]

This is an interesting comparison that I wouldn't have thought to make. I hate to give such a short response to such a long, and well thought out OP, but my unfun response is simply that both are the result of incompetent writers who have a cartoonish view of villains. I think a lot of the problems with both come from a lack of understanding of the franchises for which they were written, as can be seen by so many aspects within those movies.